Posts from the “UNISON” Category

If you were following the #uNDC14 hashtag on Twitter last week you’ll have seen that despite our best efforts we didn’t manage to get the violence against women motions admitted onto the UNISON conference agenda. What we did manage to do however was ensure the issue wasn’t ignored. By anyone. I’ve put together a Storify that pretty much covers what happened – [View the story “Tell UNISON to…….” on Storify] – but I did just want to add a few more things myself. First off, for those who aren’t conference geeks and who have no idea what some of the jargon in that Storify means, here’s a brief timeline of what happened: On Monday 16th those of us involved in submitting the violence against…

Here’s a selection of pics from yesterday’s Save our NHS demo in Manchester. For some strange reason you won’t find much mention of the #NHS299 march and rally in the mainstream media. But it definitely happened. We were there, making ourselves heard outside the Tory Party Conference: all 50,000 of us. Related articles 50,000 rally outside Tory conference amid ‘censorship’ row (metro.co.uk) Live: 50,000 join Manchester anti-cuts march as Tory conference begins (manchestereveningnews.co.uk) More than 50,000 out for NHS protest against Tory-led Coalition’s cuts and reforms (mirror.co.uk) Marching for the NHS in Manchester #saveourNHS (think-left.org)

Okay, so I’ve had over a week now to collect my thoughts following the disastrous decision by delegates at UNISON Conference to reject a statement in support of believing women who report violence perpetrated against them, so if you’re not into the minutiae of trade union motions and amendments you’d best look away now. For those who’ve been following recent events on the left, the amendment (8.1) to motion 8 at this year’s National Delegate Conference (NDC) was pretty much a rehash of the statement MarshaJane and I came up with after UNISON Women’s Conference, and which hundreds of trade unionists, including many from UNISON, have already signed up to. You can read the original statement here – Our Movement Must be a Safe Space for…

Having read a fair few comment threads and discussions across blog sites and social networks over the past few months, I feel a need to clarify some things in respect of the Safe Space for Women statement that I co-authored with Marsha Jane back in March. First off, as the title of this post says: sometimes words really do mean what they say. Or to put it another way: nowhere in the statement do we call for the handful of people that remain in the SWP to be ‘witch-hunted’ out of our trade unions or the wider labour movement. Nowhere do we state that anyone who hasn’t signed the statement must be immediately denounced as a misogynist or a handmaiden of the patriarchy; and…

On Tuesday night I took part in the Fabian Women’s Network event Lifting the Lid: Challenging the Sexualisation of Women in Popular Culture. Diane Abbott gave the keynote speech, where she said lots of things I agreed with and then some things I disagreed with, but I’ll cover that in more detail in a separate post. Anyway, here’s what I said in my bit: “As most of you are probably aware, thanks to the submissions from feminist organisations such as Object! and the End Violence against Women coalition, last year’s Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press help put a spotlight on the tabloids, highlighting how the Sun and similar red-top newspapers demean women by the way they choose…

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Andrea Dworkin

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